New Housing Arrangements
by HPheartDM
Summary: It’s the old Dumbledore wants house unity so he makes the lions live with the snakes. Warning slash. Rated for a teensy bit of language in future chapters.
1. Chapter 1

**New Housing Arrangements**

Harry was sitting on the train back to Hogwarts for his seventh year of school. Hermione was reading and Ron and Ginny were playing a game of Exploding Snap.

Harry looked out the window, thinking about the previous year. The war had started after the Ministry and the rest of the Wizarding world took their head out of their asses and realized Voldemort was back. During the war, Harry along with the rest of the Gryffindors was surprised to see the Slytherins stay neutral. Everyone had expected them to follow in their parents footsteps and become Death Eaters. Apparently Dumbledore had offered them protection from their parents if they feared they would be forced to take the Dark Mark.

Harry was glad he didn't have to fight any of his classmates. He didn't think he would be able to kill any of the Slytherins he claimed to hate.

Over the last year and the summer, he and Dumbledore destroyed all of Voldemort's horcruxes and Voldemort himself.

"Merlin, I'm so hungry I could eat a hippogriff," said Ron, covering his growling stomach.

"And how is that any different from any other time during the day?" asked Harry, coming out of his thoughts as he saw the castle approaching.

"Honestly, you're always hungry," said Hermione from behind her book. "If you used half of the time you think about food studying, you would get great grades."

"Why would I care about grades when I'm starving?!" Ron stuck his tongue out at his girlfriend. Ron and Hermione had finally gotten together after the war ended.

"You are such a pig. I have absolutely no idea how you aren't five hundred ponds. You eat way too much," Ginny added, taking down her trunk from the rack above their heads.

"I resent that. I don't eat THAT much." All three turned to give him a disbelieving look. "Okay maybe I do eat that much," he murmured.

Harry smiled at his friend and took his trunk and Hedwig's cage out of the train and into their carriage.

When Harry and his friends arrived at the Entrance Hall, they saw a group of Slytherins approaching them.

Harry hated all of these confrontations. He had to put up his mask of hatred toward the youngest Malfoy. Harry hadn't hated Malfoy since the beginning of sixth year when he learned that he was not going to become a Death Eater like he had thought he would. After that Harry started paying more attention to him, which led him to see that his meanness was just a mask. When he was just with his friends he was almost…kind. The arrogant Malfoy disappeared and the nice Draco was seen.

But paying so much attention to Malfoy showed to have unpredicted consequences. Now that he knew who the real Draco was, he couldn't stop himself from falling for the blond.

Which was another reason he hated the confrontations. Whenever he was near him Harry had to pretend he hated him, when in reality, he loved him.

Harry was mentally trying to come up with some decent insults to throw at Draco when Professor McGonagall walked up to the Gryffindors. "What are you doing standing out here? Get inside, the sorting is about to begin."

Harry and co walked into the Great Hall and seated themselves, waiting for the new first years to enter.

After the sorting ceremony, the wonderful feast began. Hermione and Ginny looked on in disgust as Ron shoved as much food as he could into his mouth at once. Hermione had given up trying to teach Ron table manners in third year. But that didn't mean she couldn't complain. "Why can't boys eat properly?" she asked herself.

"Hey! I'm a guy and I can eat just fine thank you very much," Harry said with his nose pointing in the air.

"You don't count Harry. You're gay."

"I'm still a guy," Harry mumbled.

They spent the rest of the meal catching up with their friends that they hadn't seen since June.

When the desserts finally disappeared and the students were only thinking about their comfortable beds, the headmaster stood. After his usual warnings about the Forbidden Forest and listing all of the banned items, he dismissed everyone, except the seventh year Gryffindors and Slytherins.

"I must say, I am disappointed in all of you. You seem to be the only students left in this school who insist on continuing House rivalries. Not all of you here insist on fighting with the other house, but all of you have made no effort to become friends with the other house." All of the Gryffindors looked ashamed, while the Slytherins struggled to keep their mask of indifference at the Headmaster's penetrating gaze. "I have spoken with the Sorting Hat and we have agreed that you all need some outside influence to begin to accept each other. We have decided that instead of dorming with your own house, each Slytherin will have a Gryffindor roommate. Each pair will have their rooms somewhere in the castle. It will have a small common room, a bedroom and a bathroom. Each will have a portrait entrance that will only admit those that live in that room. Anybody outside the pair that lives there will not be allowed inside. This way, you will be forced to interact with your partner. All of these interactions will be friendly or at the very least civil.

"I will call out a name of a Gryffindor, place the Sorting Hat on your head, then he will call out the name of your partner."

"Lavender Brown," Dumbledore called. Lavender walked up to the stool and had the hat placed on her head.

It shouted, "Millicent Bulstrode."

The two girls eyed each other carefully and followed Professor Flitwick to their new rooms.

Next, Seamus Finnegan was paired with Vincent Crabbe, Hermione Granger with Pansy Parkinson, Neville Longbottom with Theodore Nott and Pavarti Patil with Daphne Greengrass.

Finally Harry's name was called. He was soon paired with Draco Malfoy. He wasn't sure how he felt about this. On one hand, they might get to know each other and become friends. On the other hand, from their close living arrangements, Draco might find out about Harry's secret and ridicule him for it.

He'll just have to wait and see.


	2. Chapter 2

Professor McGonagall led Harry and Draco to their rooms. Their common room looked a lot like the Gryffindor common room, except much smaller and was decorated in earthy tones instead of red and gold. This was great because red and gold look horrible on furniture. Professor McGonagall pointed to a door on the right side of the room. "Through there is your bedroom, and through there," she pointed to the door on the other side of the room, "is you bathroom. I trust you will do as Professor Dumbledore asks and interact civilly," she said, piercing them with her glare. "Good night." She turned and left the two boys on their own.

Malfoy turned, smirk firmly on his face, and opened his mouth, but Harry beat him to it. "Save it, Malfoy. I'm tired. Insult me tomorrow when I'll actually be able to give you a comeback." Harry left Malfoy and entered the bathroom to brush his teeth. By the time Harry stumbled out of the bathroom, he was too sleepy to see Malfoy brooding by the fire. Thankfully he was awake enough to remember to put a silencing charm around his bed. Since the death of Voldemort, Harry had been having nightmares about the war almost every night. He would wake up screaming just like he did when Moldy Voldy was still alive and torturing and killing.

Draco's POV

_What am I going to do? How am I going to keep up my mask when we're always together?_ Draco thought, staring into the fire. _How am I going to keep myself under control if he is always just in the next room? _Draco was scared that now that he would be seeing Harry almost 24/7, Harry would discover his deepest secret.

Ever since fifth year when Draco realized that his father was full of shit, he questioned what he blindly followed. He realized that the Dark Lord's view on purity was faulty. You can't determine someone's magical ability by one's blood. Look at Crabbe and Goyle for example. While Draco was friends with both, he still could see the truth, that both were pureblood yet had a very low magical ability. Then look at Granger. Muggle-born, yet she was probably better at magic than he was.

Those observations contradicted his father's beliefs, so he looked to see what else was wrong with his views. And found something completely unexpected.

He realized that Harry was not the attention-seeking brat that his father insisted he was. He was caring. He helped everyone he could. He was brave. He faced death numerous times trying to save the ones he loved.

Now that he knew who the real Harry was, he wished he didn't. Because if you really know who Harry Potter is, there's no way you can't fall in love with him. Yes, that was Draco's big secret. He was completely, head-over-heels in love with the Boy-Who-Just-Won't-Die. Nobody knew, but he thought he saw Granger giving him odd looks. He knew that she thought something was up with him, but he hoped that she was hypothesizing wrong. He would be absolutely mortified if someone found out that the supposedly ice cold Slytherin Prince was in love with the Gryffindor Golden Boy. It would destroy his reputation, and Harry would probably be so sickened that he would never even look at him again.

Draco sighed. It was getting very late, so he got up and walked into his bedroom. He was half asleep even before his head touched the pillow.

Draco was _not_ a morning person. It usually took the combines forces of Crabbe and Goyle to get him vertical in the morning. Usually, one grabbed his arms and the other grabbed his legs and they forced him into a standing position. Now it seems like they have changed their method to beating him repeatedly over the head with a pillow. "Stoff it." He said drowsily, swatting above his head lethargically.

"Come on Malfoy. Get your lazy ass out of bed."

Now that was new. His bodyguards never spoke to him like that. He opened one eye and was shocked to see Harry Potter standing over him with the foul pillow in his hands. Last night slowly came back to his sleep-riddled mind.

"Come on Malfoy. Don't make me pour ice cold water over your head."

"Fine, fine, I'm getting up." Draco replied, throwing his legs over the side of his bed. "What time is it?"

"7:30, you should hurry up if you want to get to breakfast on time." Harry said as he moved to the door to their common room. "I'm going down to the Great Hall. See you in class."

Draco cursed under his breath. His morning ritual took one hour. Why did Harry have to wait so long to wake him up?

He jumped out of bed and threw on some clothes, then ran to the bathroom. He splashed some water on his face, brushed his teeth and ran a comb through his hair. He then ran to the Great Hall. He just barely arrived in time to get his schedule.

Harry's POV

"How was the Ferret, Harry?" Ron asked from across the Gryffindor table.

"It was fine. I went right to bed when we got there so we didn't fight or anything," Harry answered.

"Good for you Harry. Be the bigger person and stop the fights." Hermione said.

"Who were you paired with, Ron?" Harry asked.

"Blaise Zambini."

"Well we've never had any personal problems with him before. Was he all right?"

"Yeah he was fine. We just talked a little about upcoming classes this year. He seems like a pretty nice guy," Ron said.

"Oh my God. Alert the press. Ron said something decent about a Slytherin. Hell must be going through some cold weather right now." Hermione smirked.

"Oh shut up Hermione." Ron said.

Professor McGonagall was walking up through the isle, handing out schedules. When Harry got his he frowned.

"I have every single class with the Slytherins."

"Well, if you had taken Ancient Runes with me then you would have had a class with the Ravenclaws," Hermione said, putting her schedule.

"Yeah, whatever. I think Dumbledore is getting a little overkill with the whole unity stuff." Harry glowered. "Hey, do you think the teachers will make us sit with them?"

"Probably," said Ron. "Come on. If we're late for Potions Snape will kill us."

They all got up and trudged on to their least favorite class. Except Hermione, who looked slightly excited for classes to start again.


	3. Chapter 3

Disclaimer: I just realize that I forgot to put the disclaimer at the beginning of this story and was too lazy to edit the first chapter, so here it is. Don't own any of the great characters in the Harry Potter universe. If I did, then my writing would be _much _better and I'd be freaking rich. I heard that J.K.R. is richer than the Queen of England. Sorry, I'm starting to babble. That's defiantly the longest disclaimer I've ever seen. Lol

A/N: Hello again. Sorry for the kind of longish wait. I sort of forgot about this story for a while and then I got a little writer's block. Enjoy.

HPDMHPDM

Potions was a disastrous affair. Snape paired everyone with their roommate, so there was not a very friendly atmosphere, not that this classroom was ever cheerful.

First, Neville blew up his cauldron onto his partner, Theodore Nott. Nott face had doubled in size on contact with the incorrectly made potion. He was rushed off to the hospital while Snape gave Neville a fifteen minute long lecture about how incompetent he was.

While Snape's back was turned, Crabbe and Seamus had gotten into a fight, resulting in Seamus getting hit with a Stinging hex and Crabbe a Bat Bogey jinx before Professor Snape noticed. He took off thirty points from Gryffindor for picking a fight and five points from Slytherin for lowering himself to the Gryffindor's brutish ways.

The rest of the class had gone on without incident, until ten minutes before the bell. Draco and Harry had been making their potion without any type of interaction except to ask for a certain ingredient or to see the instructions. But finally, the silence was too much for Draco. He broke the silence the only way he knew how. Mockery.

"You must be very pleased to be paired with me this year. Maybe you won't fail if I keep making the potions for you."

"Oh shut it Malfoy," Harry replied, "I did half of the work. I didn't just sit on my ass for the last hour doing nothing."

"Oh, so that's the reason that my potion looks like purple sludge instead of the smooth white liquid it should be. Didn't your stupid Mudblood mother teach you your colors before she got herself blown up by You Know Who?" Draco smirked.

Harry, having already been put in a bad mood just by being in the potions dungeons, snapped. He clenched his fist and plowed it into Malfoy's face as hard as he could. (A/N haha the end of that sentence gave me a dirty mental picture)

Unfortunately, Draco was standing next to their bubbling cauldron. From the force of Harry's punch, he stumbled back, knocking over the almost finished potion, coating half of the floor in acid. Draco fell onto his back, on top of his spilled potion, causing his back to burst out in boils. Many other close by students' ankles received the same fate as Malfoy's back, but many had time to climb up onto a chair or table before they were touched by it.

Snape was furious. He quickly cleared the floor of the potion and dismissed the infected kids to the hospital wing. He then turned on Harry who was standing very still, bracing himself for the rage he knew was coming.

Twenty minutes later, he made his way to lunch. When he sat down at the Gryffindor table, Ron asked, "What's the damage?"

"Fifty house points and three detentions with Filch. Professor McGonagall is so going to be pissed at me for putting Gryffindor in negative points on the first day of school."

"It'll be fine. Hermione will get the house points back by this evening," Ron said, piling his plate high with mountains of food. "How's Malfoy's jaw?" he asked with a smirk.

"Ron, you should not be encouraging what Harry did. You shouldn't have punched Malfoy, Harry. Try to get along with him, or this year is going to be really hard."

"I tried, but he provoked me, it wasn't my fault."

"Malfoy is always doing something to get under your skin," Hermione calmly replied. "You just have to get used to it and work on not hitting him every time he says something stupid."

"Which is every five seconds, so you will need a lot of practice," Ron said around a huge bite of his lunch. "Just think of something else every time he opens his mouth."

"So are the students who got hit with the potion okay?" Hermione asked.

"I'm sure they're fine. Madame Pomphery can fix anything."

"And I'm sure that Malfoy is going to be whining like a baby about it. I am _so_ not looking forward to tonight," Harry said, looking morosely into his soup, imagining how bitchy Malfoy will be that night.

HPDMHPDM

A/N: This chapter seems a little shorter. Sorry, I'll try to make the next one longer, and write it quicker. Please review, it makes my day.


	4. Chapter 4

Summary: Just a short fic I thought of after watching 10 things I hate about you

Disclaimer: Yes, I am the creator of Harry Potter and Co. and am now lying in my pile of cash, throwing hundred dollar bills in the air. I'm just that awesome.

HPDMHPDMHPDM

New Housing Arrangements

Chapter 4

Draco sat in the infirmary, thinking deeply. He wasn't sure what had happened today. Why was he still acting like a total prick to Potter? Shouldn't he be his actual self around him, then try to sneak into his pants? He defiantly wasn't getting anywhere near them with this attitude.

Once Madame Pomphrey was done making him good as new, he slipped out and went to his rooms, trying to figure out some way of apologizing for what he had said earlier. It was defiantly harder than he thought it would be. He couldn't even to say "I'm sorry" to himself, let alone in front of someone else.

Thankfully, when Draco got to his rooms, Harry wasn't there yet, so he had some extra time to try to figure out an apology. He hadn't gotten far when Harry stepped trough the door.

HPDM

After Harry had finished dinner, he took a very indirect route to his rooms, to prolong the time he spent without Malfoy. But, after a while, he had to get back to start on his homework. He decided that he should just ignore Malfoy for as long as he could. He knew that if he tried to do anything, even apologize for hitting him (though he would never do that, it was Malfoy's doing) it would end in a fight. So he thought it would be best to just not talk to the blond.

That plan didn't work out too well.

As soon as he came in and sat down at his desk, Malfoy started babbling to him.

"Potter…well…um…you see…about before…" he stuttered

"What the hell do you want Malfoy? I'm trying to do my homework, so either spit it out or go away," Harry said darkly.

"Well…I just wanted…to…you know…for earlier. It was cruel," Malfoy tried to apologize.

Harry looked shocked. "Are you trying to say sorry Malfoy?"

"Um, yeah," Malfoy said, looking at the floor.

"You haven't done this before have you? You seem out of practice." Harry said grinning.

Malfoy looked up and grinned in return. "No. I don't ever remember saying it before."

"You know, you never actually said 'I'm sorry.'" Harry grinned wider. "I think I should make you say it before I forgive you."

Malfoy grimaced. "You are evil. Fine, I'm sorry."

"See that wasn't so hard now was it?" Harry laughed. "I'm sorry for punching you too. How's your jaw feeling?"

"It's fine. Madame Promphrey can fix anything."

"Yeah, I know." Harry said. After a slightly awkward pause he continued, "You know I really do need to start on my homework. I don't want to get behind in the first week of school. Hermione would kill me."

"Yeah, okay." Harry turned back to his work, starting on his Potions homework, and Malfoy sat in front of the fire in a squishy armchair, beginning his homework too.

HPDM

The next few weeks were very tranquil. Neither boy talked to the other often, trying to prevent any fights. Occasionally they would fight over the bathroom or something like that, but none ended in the hospital wing.

After another night of avoiding each other, Draco had had enough. He hated being near someone but not even talking to that person. It got very lonely.

"Potter?" he asked tentatively from across the room. Harry was deeply engrossed in the book in his lap, and Draco didn't want him to get mad at him.

"Hmmm?" Harry answered, his eyes never leaving the page.

"Well, I was wondering if we could maybe have like a truce or something. I know we've been tip toeing around each other so we won't get the other angry, but this is getting really boring. It's incredibly dull to have to sit here and not to be able to talk to anyone. I mean, we don't have to become best of friends, but can we please stop this silence?"

"I don't see why not," Harry said glancing up from his book. "Everyone else seems to have been able to. Even Ron is getting along with his Slytherin roommate."

"Okay, so um…would you like to play exploding snap?" Draco asked, slightly surprised that Harry said yes.

HPDMHPDMHPD

(A/N): I just began my freshman year of high school. I am sooooo pissed with my schedule because none of my close friends are in any of my classes. Tear… :( And I have this one teacher who is a total freaking pervert, and is so fucking stupid. He said that 2 people in a group of 35 people is less that 1 of that group. Seriously? I mean, how the hell did he make it through college? I am so totally pissed right now. Except, I do know that I'll get an A because he basically grades his students on bra size, and I have pretty big boobs, so I guess I shouldn't whine too much. Sorry, I'm kind of using this as a diary right now, lol. Anyways...review!! Yay!! Oh and sorry about the length. I said I would make it longer, but I think its actually shorter.


	5. Chapter 5

Sorry I know it's just an A/N and not actual story. I just wanted to say that I'm sorry I haven't updated. This school year has been really busy and I just haven't had the time. But I just reread the story and I will be finishing it. I don't know how soon, because I'm still pretty busy, but I just wanted to let anyone who is still waiting that I _will _finish.

Sorry again.


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